Sad Facial Expressions Research Articles

Event-related Oscillations to Emotional Faces are Related to a History of Internalizing Disorders.

Event-related oscillations (EROs) may represent sensitive biomarkers or endophenotypes for disorders that underlie risk behaviors such as suicidal thoughts and actions. In this study, young adults of American Indian (AI) (n = 821) and Mexican American (MA) (n = 721) ancestry (age 18-30 yrs) were clinically assessed for internalizing and externalizing disorders, and an internalizing scale was generated by extracting core diagnostic items from 6 lifetime DSM5-compatible diagnoses (social phobia, panic disorder, agoraphobia, obsessive compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, major depressive episode) and symptoms of suicidality. EROs were generated to sad, happy and neutral faces, and energy and phase locking of delta ERO oscillations were assessed in frontal areas. An increase in delta ERO energy was found in the frontal lead (FZ) following presentation of the sad facial expressions in those with a history of 10 or more internalizing symptoms compared to those with no symptoms. Increases in delta ERO energy in FZ were also associated with a diagnosis of major depressive disorder (MDD), but not with anxiety disorders or antisocial personality disorder/conduct disorders (ASP). Major depression was also associated with increases in cross-cortical phase-locking (FZ-PZ). A decrease in the percentage of correctly identified neutral faces also was seen among those with 10 or more internalizing symptoms compared to those without internalizing symptoms, and in those with anxiety disorders, but not in those with ASP or MDD as compared to their controls. These findings suggest ERO measures may represent important potential biomarkers of depressive disorders as well as risk indicators for suicidal behaviors.

Childhood adversity and approach/avoidance-related behaviour in boys

Childhood adversity has been suggested to affect the vulnerability for developmental psychopathology, including both externalizing and internalizing symptoms. This study examines spontaneous attention biases for negative and positive emotional facial expressions as potential intermediate phenotypes. In detail, typically developing boys (6–13 years) underwent an eye-tracking paradigm displaying happy, angry, sad and fearful faces. An approach bias towards positive emotional facial expressions with increasing childhood adversity levels was found. In addition, an attention bias away from negative facial expressions was observed with increasing childhood adversity levels, especially for sad facial expressions. The results might be interpreted in terms of emotional regulation strategies in boys at risk for reactive aggression and depressive behaviour.

MODULATION EFFECT OF MOTOR ACTIVITY ON LIMBIC AREAS: AN FMRI STUDY

Neural activation of the motor cortex has been consistently reported to be evoked in the emotion processing of facial expressions, but it is poorly understood whether and how the motor system influences the activity of limbic areas during participants’ perceived emotional expressions. In this study, we proposed that motor activations evoked by emotional processing influence the activations in limbic areas such as amygdala during the perception of facial expressions. To examine this issue, a masked priming paradigm was adopted in our fMRI experiment, which could modulate the activation within the motor cortex when healthy participants perceived sad or happy facial expressions. We found that the first presented stimulus (masked prime) in each trial reduced the activations in the premotor cortex and inferior frontal gyrus when the movement of facial muscles implied by the arrows on the prime stimulus was consistent with that implied by the target face expressions (compatible condition), but increased the activations in these two areas when the movements implied by the arrows and the target face expressions were inconsistent (incompatible condition). The superior temporal gyrus, middle cingulate gyrus and amygdala also showed similar response tendency to that in motor cortex. Moreover, psychophysiological interaction (PPI) analysis showed that both right middle cingulate gyrus and bilateral superior temporal gyrus were closely linked to the premotor cortex with inferior frontal gyrus during the incompatible trials compared with the compatible trials. Together with this result and the significant activation correlations between the motor cortex and the limbic areas, this work revealed the modulation effect of motor cortex on brain regions related to emotion perception, suggesting that motor representation of facial movements can affect emotion experience. Our results provide new evidence for the functional role of motor system in the perception of facial emotions, and could contribute to the understanding of the deficit in social interaction for patients with autism or schizophrenia.

Repetitive negative thinking and depressive symptoms are differentially related to response inhibition: The influence of non-emotional, socio-emotional, and self-referential stimuli

Identifying transdiagnostic correlates of response inhibition deficits is important for understanding risk for internalizing disorders. Little work has compared the relationships between internalizing symptoms and repetitive negative thinking (RNT) with response inhibition across non-emotional and emotional domains, and no work has compared these relationships for inhibition of socio-emotional relative to self-referential stimuli. Undergraduate students (N = 71, 18.44 ± 0.71 years) selected on extremes of internalizing symptoms completed the Perseverative Thinking Questionnaire (PTQ) and a Go/No-Go paradigm using non-emotional stimuli, other individuals' sad facial expressions, and participants' own sad facial expressions. Participants exhibited more commission errors for sad facial expressions than non-emotional trials, though commission errors for others' and participants’ own sad facial expressions did not differ. Depressive symptoms were associated with poorer inhibition of non-emotional stimuli; however, PTQ scores were associated with more successful inhibition of non-emotional stimuli. Our results provide evidence that transdiagnostic RNT as assessed by the PTQ may be related to better inhibition in non-emotional domains, but negative emotional stimuli may interfere with successful inhibition for those with high RNT, while depressive symptoms were linked to poorer inhibition of non-emotional stimuli. These findings have implications for internalizing disorders, which often are accompanied by RNT.

Improving Human-Robot Interaction by Enhancing NAO Robot Awareness of Human Facial Expression.

An intriguing challenge in the human–robot interaction field is the prospect of endowing robots with emotional intelligence to make the interaction more genuine, intuitive, and natural. A crucial aspect in achieving this goal is the robot’s capability to infer and interpret human emotions. Thanks to its design and open programming platform, the NAO humanoid robot is one of the most widely used agents for human interaction. As with person-to-person communication, facial expressions are the privileged channel for recognizing the interlocutor’s emotional expressions. Although NAO is equipped with a facial expression recognition module, specific use cases may require additional features and affective computing capabilities that are not currently available. This study proposes a highly accurate convolutional-neural-network-based facial expression recognition model that is able to further enhance the NAO robot’ awareness of human facial expressions and provide the robot with an interlocutor’s arousal level detection capability. Indeed, the model tested during human–robot interactions was 91% and 90% accurate in recognizing happy and sad facial expressions, respectively; 75% accurate in recognizing surprised and scared expressions; and less accurate in recognizing neutral and angry expressions. Finally, the model was successfully integrated into the NAO SDK, thus allowing for high-performing facial expression classification with an inference time of 0.34 ± 0.04 s.

The Interaction of Facial Expression and Donor-Recipient Eye Contact in Donation Intentions: Based on the Intensity of Emotion.

Both happy and sad facial expressions of recipients are frequently used in charity advertisements. However, the relative effectiveness of these two types of facial expressions has been found paradoxical in the past. In this study, we examine when happy facial expression can more effectively increase donation intentions of consumers and when vice versa. Specially, we propose that eye contact between a donor and a potential recipient may moderate the relative effectiveness of happy and sad facial expressions, and further explain the interaction effect from the perspective of emotional intensity. Results from two experiments suggest that, when donor-recipient eye contact is present, consumers tend to have stronger emotional intensity, and, in turn, show higher donation intentions when the recipient is with a happy rather than sad facial expression. In contrast, when the eye contact is absent, consumers may show stronger emotional intensity and donation intentions toward the charity advertisement with a recipient showing sad rather than happy expression.

Effects of posed smiling on memory for happy and sad facial expressions

The perception and storage of facial emotional expressions constitutes an important human skill that is essential for our daily social interactions. While previous research revealed that facial feedback can influence the perception of facial emotional expressions, it is unclear whether facial feedback also plays a role in memory processes of facial emotional expressions. In the present study we investigated the impact of facial feedback on the performance in emotional visual working memory (WM). For this purpose, 37 participants underwent a classical facial feedback manipulation (FFM) (holding a pen with the teeth—inducing a smiling expression vs. holding a pen with the non-dominant hand—as a control condition) while they performed a WM task on varying intensities of happy or sad facial expressions. Results show that the smiling manipulation improved memory performance selectively for happy faces, especially for highly ambiguous facial expressions. Furthermore, we found that in addition to an overall negative bias specifically for happy faces (i.e. happy faces are remembered as more negative than they initially were), FFM induced a positivity bias when memorizing emotional facial information (i.e. faces were remembered as being more positive than they actually were). Finally, our data demonstrate that men were affected more by FFM: during induced smiling men showed a larger positive bias than women did. These data demonstrate that facial feedback not only influences our perception but also systematically alters our memory of facial emotional expressions.

Negative parental emotional environment increases the association between childhood behavioral problems and impaired recognition of negative facial expressions.

Impaired facial emotion recognition is a transdiagnostic risk factor for a range of psychiatric disorders. Childhood behavioral difficulties and parental emotional environment have been independently associated with impaired emotion recognition; however, no study has examined the contribution of these factors in conjunction. We measured recognition of negative (sad, fear, anger), neutral, and happy facial expressions in 135 children aged 5-7 years referred by their teachers for behavioral problems. Parental emotional environment was assessed for parental expressed emotion (EE) - characterized by negative comments, reduced positive comments, low warmth, and negativity towards their child - using the 5-minute speech sample. Child behavioral problems were measured using the teacher-informant Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). Child behavioral problems and parental EE were independently associated with impaired recognition of negative facial expressions specifically. An interactive effect revealed that the combination of both factors was associated with the greatest risk for impaired recognition of negative faces, and in particular sad facial expressions. No relationships emerged for the identification of happy facial expressions. This study furthers our understanding of multidimensional processes associated with the development of facial emotion recognition and supports the importance of early interventions that target this domain.

Performance Analysis of Emotion Classification Using Multimodal Fusion Technique

As the central processing unit of the human body, the human brain is in charge of several activities, including cognition, perception, emotion, attention, action, and memory. Emotions have a significant impact on human well-being in their life. Methodologies for accessing emotions of human could be essential for good user-machine interactions. Comprehending BCI (Brain-Computer Interface) strategies for identifying emotions can also help people connect with the world more naturally. Many approaches for identifying human emotions have been developed using signals of EEG for classifying happy, neutral, sad, and angry emotions, discovered to be effective. The emotions are elicited by various methods, including displaying participants visuals of happy and sad facial expressions, listening to emotionally linked music, visuals, and, sometimes, both of these. In this research, a multi-model fusion approach for emotion classification utilizing BCI and EEG data with various classifiers was proposed. The 10-20 electrode setup was used to gather the EEG data. The emotions were classified using the sentimental analysis technique based on user ratings. Simultaneously, Natural Language Processing (NLP) is implemented for increasing accuracy. This analysis classified the assessment parameters as happy, neutral, sad, and angry emotions. Based on these emotions, the proposed model’s performance was assessed in terms of accuracy and overall accuracy. The proposed model has a 93.33 percent overall accuracy and increased performance in all emotions identified.

The Role of Anthropomorphic Messengers in Sustainable Participatory Corporate Social Responsibility: Focusing on Messenger’s Facial Expression and Participation Effort

This study examines the role of participation effort, focusing on the effect of anthropomorphic messengers’ facial expression on consumers’ perception in the context of corporate social responsibility (CSR). CSR activities requiring consumer participation can elicit their positive responses. Although companies’ interests in participatory CSR are increasing, academic interests in this area are still insufficient. Existing studies have not provided clear results on the effective level of participation effort and its effect on consumers’ perception of CSR activities. In this context, we conducted a study that investigated the effect of participation effort, focusing on the facial expression of an anthropomorphic messenger. The study shows that participation effort has a positive relationship with the intention to participate in CSR because consumers perceive messengers with a sad facial expression as victims. However, they perceive messengers with a happy facial expression as marketing agents. Hence, participation effort decreases participation intention. Finally, we discuss the meaning of the study and propose suggestions for future research.

Attachment style and accuracy of facial expression recognition in depression

Aim . To investigate links between the attachment style and ability to detect facial emotions using a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) paradigm in depressed patients. Materials and methods . Participants diagnosed with mild to moderate depression or dysthymia (19 patients) and healthy volunteers (20 individuals) were to identify one of eight basic emotions on 48 photos by choosing the appropriate answer from two options. Attachment was measured using the Experience in Close Relationships Scale. In addition, depression, alexithymia, and rumination were estimated as other possible correlates. Results. In the group of patients with depression, anxious attachment score had a negative correlation with the accuracy of angry facial expression detection (ρ = –0.65, p < 0.01) and a positive correlation with the accuracy of sad facial expression recognition (ρ = 0.48, p < 0.05). Patients with high total rumination (ρ = –0.48, p < 0.05) and depressive rumination (ρ = –0.53, p < 0.05) scores also detected angry facial expression less accurately. None of the mentioned links were present in healthy people, however, they demonstrated a correlation of the total number of portraits tagged as “sad” with the brooding rumination score (ρ =0 .53, p < 0.05). Conclusion . Attachment disruptions in depressed patients may be related to aggravation of the deficit in the ability to detect emotions of others.

Individual differences in sadness coherence: Associations with dispositional affect and age.

The current laboratory-based study examined individual differences in sadness coherence (i.e., coherence between objectively coded sad facial expressions and heart rate in response to a sad film clip) and associations with dispositional affect (i.e., positive and negative affect, extraversion, neuroticism) and age in a sample of younger and older adults. Results showed that (a) greater sadness coherence was associated with lower dispositional negative affect (i.e., greater positive to negative affect ratio; lower neuroticism) and (b) older adults had greater sadness coherence than younger adults. Findings remained stable when controlling for covariates. Results were specific to coherence characterized by an inverse association between heart rate and facial expressions of sadness (i.e., did not emerge for absolute changes in heart rate or skin conductance), specific to sad facial expressions (i.e., did not emerge for happy facial expressions), specific to stimulus (i.e., did not emerge for sadness coherence in response to a happy film clip), generalized across overall levels of emotional responding (i.e., sad facial expressions; heart rate reactivity), and remained stable when controlling for expressive suppression. These findings demonstrate that individuals who exhibit greater sadness coherence experience more favorable dispositional affect, consistent with evolutionary-functionalist models of emotion, and that sadness coherence is higher in late life, consistent with developmental accounts of heightened reactivity to loss in late life. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Right and left inferior frontal opercula are involved in discriminating angry and sad facial expressions

BackgroundNeuroimaging studies suggest that the inferior frontal operculum (IFO) is part of a neuronal network involved in facial expression processing, but the causal role of this region in emotional face discrimination remains elusive. ObjectiveWe used cathodal (inhibitory) tDCS to test whether right (r-IFO) and left (l-IFO) IFO play a role in discriminating basic facial emotions in healthy volunteers. Specifically, we tested if the two sites are selectively involved in the processing of facial expressions conveying high or low arousal emotions. Based on the Arousal Hypothesis we expected to find a modulation of high and low arousal emotions by cathodal tDCS of the r-IFO and the l-IFO, respectively. MethodsFirst, we validated an Emotional Faces Discrimination Task (EFDT). Then, we targeted the r-IFO and the l-IFO with cathodal tDCS (i.e. the cathode was placed over the right or left IFO, while the anode was placed over the contralateral supraorbital area) during facial emotions discrimination on the EFDT. Non-active (i.e. sham) tDCS was a control condition. ResultsOverall, participants manifested the “happy face advantage”. Interestingly, tDCS to r-IFO enhanced discrimination of faces expressing anger (a high arousal emotion), whereas, tDCS to l-IFO decreased discrimination of faces expressing sadness (a low arousal emotion). ConclusionsOur findings revealed a differential causal role of r-IFO and l-IFO in the discrimination of specific high and low arousal emotions. Crucially, these results suggest that cathodal tDCS might reduce the neural noise triggered by facial emotions, improving discrimination of high arousal emotions but disrupting discrimination of low arousal emotions. These findings offer new insights for treating clinical population with deficits in processing facial expressions.

Differential Modulation of Effective Connectivity in the Brain's Extended Face Processing System by Fearful and Sad Facial Expressions.

The processing of emotional facial expressions is underpinned by the integration of information from a distributed network of brain regions. Despite investigations into how different emotional expressions alter the functional relationships within this network, there remains limited research examining which regions drive these interactions. This study investigated effective connectivity during the processing of sad and fearful facial expressions to better understand how these stimuli differentially modulate emotional face processing circuitry. Ninety-eight healthy human adolescents and young adults, aged between 15 and 25 years, underwent an implicit emotional face processing fMRI task. Using dynamic causal modeling (DCM), we examined five brain regions implicated in face processing. These were restricted to the right hemisphere and included the occipital and fusiform face areas, amygdala, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Processing sad and fearful facial expressions were associated with greater positive connectivity from the amygdala to dlPFC. Only the processing of fearful facial expressions was associated with greater negative connectivity from the vmPFC to amygdala. Compared with processing sad faces, processing fearful faces was associated with significantly greater connectivity from the amygdala to dlPFC. No difference was found between the processing of these expressions and the connectivity from the vmPFC to amygdala. Overall, our findings indicate that connectivity from the amygdala and dlPFC appears to be responding to dimensional features which differ between these expressions, likely those relating to arousal. Further research is necessary to examine whether this relationship is also observable for positively valenced emotions.

Facial Emotion Perception in Families Affected With Borderline Personality Disorder.

Emotion perception biases may precipitate problematic interpersonal interactions in families affected with borderline personality disorder (BPD) and lead to conflictual relationships. In the present study, the authors investigated the familial aggregation of facial emotion recognition biases for neutral, happy, sad, fearful, and angry expressions in probands with BPD (n = 89), first-degree biological relatives (n = 67), and healthy controls (n = 87). Relatives showed comparable accuracy and response times to controls in recognizing negative emotions in aggregate and most discrete emotions. For sad expressions, both probands and relatives displayed slower response latencies, and they were more likely than controls to perceive sad expressions as fearful. Nonpsychiatrically affected relatives were slower than controls in responding to negative emotional expressions in aggregate, and fearful and sad facial expressions more specifically. These findings uncover potential biases in perceiving sad and fearful facial expressions that may be transmitted in families affected with BPD.

Beyond shared signals: The role of downward gaze in the stereotypical representation of sad facial expressions.

According to the influential shared signal hypothesis, perceived gaze direction influences the recognition of emotion from the face, for example, gaze averted sideways facilitates the recognition of sad expressions because both gaze and expression signal avoidance. Importantly, this approach assumes that gaze direction is an independent cue that influences emotion recognition. But could gaze direction also impact emotion recognition because it is part of the stereotypical representation of the expression itself? In Experiment 1, we measured gaze aversion in participants engaged in a facial expression posing task. In Experiment 2, we examined the use of gaze aversion when constructing facial expressions on a computerized avatar. Results from both experiments demonstrated that downward gaze plays a central role in the representation of sad expressions. In Experiment 3, we manipulated gaze direction in perceived facial expressions and found that sadness was the only expression yielding a recognition advantage for downward, but not sideways gaze. Finally, in Experiment 4 we independently manipulated gaze aversion and eyelid closure, thereby demonstrating that downward gaze enhances sadness recognition irrespective of eyelid position. Together, these findings indicate that (1) gaze and expression are not independent cues and (2) the specific type of averted gaze is critical. In consequence, several premises of the shared signal hypothesis may need revision. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

The face of future: Face expressions during future thinking.

Future thinking, which is the ability to project oneself forward in time to pre-experience an event, is intimately associated with emotions. We investigated whether emotional future thinking can activate emotional facial expressions. We invited 43 participants to imagine future scenarios, cued by the words "happy," "sad," and "city." Future thinking was video recorded and analysed with a facial analysis software to classify whether facial expressions (i.e., happy, sad, angry, surprised, scared, disgusted, and neutral facial expression) of participants were neutral or emotional. Analysis demonstrated higher levels of happy facial expressions during future thinking cued by the word "happy" than "sad" or "city." In contrast, higher levels of sad facial expressions were observed during future thinking cued by the word "sad" than "happy" or "city." Higher levels of neutral facial expressions were observed during future thinking cued by the word "city" than "happy" or "sad." In the three conditions, the neutral facial expressions were high compared with happy and sad facial expressions. Together, emotional future thinking, at least for future scenarios cued by "happy" and "sad," seems to trigger the corresponding facial expression. Our study provides an original physiological window into the subjective emotional experience during future thinking.

Five-year-olds' facial mimicry following social ostracism is modulated by attachment security.

Social ostracism triggers an increase in affiliative behaviours. One such behaviour is the rapid copying of others' facial expressions, called facial mimicry. Insofar, it remains unknown how individual differences in intrinsic affiliation motivation regulate responses to social ostracism during early development. We examined children's facial mimicry following ostracism as modulated by individual differences in the affiliation motivation, expressed in their attachment tendencies. Resistant and avoidant tendencies are characterized by high and low affiliation motivation, and were hypothesized to lead to facial mimicry enhancement or suppression towards an ostracizing partner, respectively. Following an ostracism manipulation in which children played a virtual game (Cyberball) with an includer and an excluder peer, mimicry of the two peers' happy and sad facial expressions was recorded with electromyography (EMG). Attachment was assessed via parent-report questionnaire. We found that 5-year-olds smiled to sad facial expressions of the excluder peer, while they showed no facial reactions for the includer peer. Neither resistant nor avoidant tendencies predicted facial mimicry to the excluder peer. Yet, securely attached children smiled towards the excluder peer, when sad facial expressions were displayed. In conclusion, these findings suggest a modulation of facial reactions following ostracism by early attachment.

The Bright Sides of Sadness in Late Life

Sadness is often thought of as unpleasant and dysfunctional. Yet, evolutionary-functionalist approaches and discrete emotional aging frameworks suggest that sadness is an emotion that helps us deal with loss and thus may become particularly salient and adaptive in late life. This talk presents findings from a multi-study, multi-method research program using age-diverse samples and experimental and longitudinal study designs. Findings show (1) intact or elevated levels of sadness responding in late life (i.e., higher sadness expressions in response to distressing film clips; higher coherence between sad facial expressions and autonomic physiology in response to film clips depicting loss; stability in sadness behaviors in marital conflict interactions). Moreover, (2) higher levels of sadness responding are linked to adaptive outcomes in late life (i.e., higher social connectedness, higher compensatory control strategies) with some effects generalizing across age groups (i.e., links between sadness coherence and well-being). Implications for future research are discussed.

Age Similarity in Emotion Perception Based on Eye Gaze Manipulation

The purpose of this study was to examine age differences in emotion perception as a function of emotion type and gaze direction. Old and young adult participants were presented with facial images showing happiness, sadness, fear, anger and disgust while having their eyes tracked. The image stimuli included a manipulation of eye gaze. Half of the facial expressions had a directed eye gaze while the other half showed an averted gaze. A 2 (age) x 2 (gaze) x 5 (emotion) repeated measures ANOVA was used to analyze emotion perception scores and fixation to eye and mouth regions of the face. The manipulation of eye gaze yielded more age similarities than differences in emotion perception. Overall, we did not detect age differences in recognition ability. However, we found that certain emotion categories differentially impacted emotion perception. Interestingly, we observed that an averted gaze led to beneficial performance for fear and disgust faces. Additionally, participants spent more time fixating on the eye regions of sad facial expressions. We discuss how naturalistic manipulations of various facial features could impact age-related differences (or similarities) in emotion perception.